The Wanting Seed (16 page)

‘Don’t think nothing of it,’ said Charlie Linklater. ‘Now, just give me one little crack on the back of the head with that truncheon, so as it’ll look more natural. No need to lock the cell-door, because nobody’s going to try and get out, but don’t forget to keep them keys jingling, so as to be nice and natural. Go on, now. Hit.’ Tristram tapped weakly, as at a breakfast egg, on the oaken skull. ‘You can do better than that,’ said Charlie Linklater. Tristram, his lips tight, cracked him a beauty. ‘Something like, that is,’ said Charlie Linklater, showing the whites of his eyes. His bulk crashed to the flags, making the tin mugs rattle on their shelf.

Outside on the corridor Tristram looked both ways with care. At the far end of the gallery two warders leaned gloomily on the well-rails, chatting, gazing down as into the sea. At this end the way was clear: four cells only to the stairhead. Tristram was worried about being a bearded warder. He found a handkerchief in the pocket of the stiff alien trousers and, with a fully stretched hand, he spread this over his muzzle. Tooth-
ache. or jaw-ache or something. He decided against Charlie Linklater’s advice: looking unnatural, he must behave unnaturally. A jangle of keys and clomp of boots, he danced clumsily down the iron stairs. On the landing he met another warder going up. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ this one asked. ‘Burk crawk workersgate,’ mumbled Tristram. The other nodded, satisfied, and continued to climb.

Tristram clattered on down. He held his breath. This looked as if it were going to be too easy. Flight after flight of ringing iron, row after endless row of cells, a yellowing card of close print on each landing:
H.M. Prisons. Regulations
. Then at last came the ground floor and the feeling that he was balancing these tiers of cells on his own delirious head. A beef-faced warder, stiff as if artificially braced, collided with him head-on as he turned a random corner. ‘Here, here,’ he said. ‘You all right? New here, aren’t you?’ ‘Humgoil,’ chumbled Tristram. ‘Gert webbing. Gort foresight.’ ‘If it’s the sickbay you’re after,’ said the warder, ‘it’s straight down there. Can’t miss it.’ He pointed. ‘Inch of bellrope,’ chewed Tristram. ‘That’s all right, mate,’ said the warder. Tristram hurried on. Now it was all institutional corridors, the walls buff with nigger-brown dadoes, a strong smell of disinfectant, OFFICERS’ SICKBAY said a blue box over a lintel, a light inside it. Tristram walked boldly into a place of cubicles, youths in white coats, the stench of spirit. From the nearest door came the splashing and churning of bath-water, the grunting of a male bather. Tristram found the door open and entered. Blue tiles, steam, the bather lathering his head with eyes tight shut as in direst agony. Forgot
to shave,’ shouted Tristram. ‘Eh?’ the bather shouted back. To his minor elation Tristram found an electric shaver clamped to a bracket in the wall. He switched on and started to carve his beard like so much meat. ‘Here,’ said the bather, his sight restored, ‘what’s going on? Who let you in?’ ‘Shaving,’ said Tristram, seeing with shock his lantern jaws emerge in the mirror as the swathes fell, with horror the fierce mistrustfulness of his eyes. ‘Won’t be a minute,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s private these days,’ grumbled the bather. ‘Not even when you have a bath is it private.’ He stirred the water fretfully, saying, ‘You might have the decency to take your hat off when you come barging in disturbing a bloke’s bath.’ ‘Shan’t be more than two seconds,’ said Tristram. He left a moustache to save time. ‘You might clear up all that mess on the floor,’ said the bather. ‘Why should I have to tread in my bare feet on another bloke’s whiskers?’ And then, ‘Here, what’s going on? Who are you, anyway? You’ve got a beard, leastways you had one, and that’s not right. Warders don’t have beards, not in this prison they don’t.’ He tried to get out of the bath, a rabbit-bodied man with a black pelt from sternum to pubes. Tristram pushed him back in again, very soapy, and dashed to the door. There was, he was glad to see, a key in it, and this he transferred to the outside. The bather, all suds, tried again to lift himself out. Clean-shaven Tristram mouthed good-bye fishily, went out, then locked the door. ‘Here,’ the bather could be heard calling, splashing. In the corridor Tristram calmly said to a white-coated youth, ‘I’m new here and seem to have got lost. How do I get out of this place?’ The youth led him, smiling, from the sickbay and gave
directions. ‘Down there, dear,’ he said, ‘then turn sharp left, then straight on, you can’t miss it, dear.’ ‘Thank you very much,’ said Tristram, smiling with his black hole for a mouth. Everybody had been, really and truly, most obliging.

In the wide high gloomy hall there were several warders apparently coming off duty, handing their keys over to a chief officer, his blue new and smart, very thin, his height nearer seven feet than six. ‘Right,’ he kept saying with little interest, ‘Right,’ checking the key-numbers with a list, ticking, ‘Right,’ passing the keys to an assistant who hung them on a wall-board. ‘Right,’ he said to Tristram. There was a small open port in the massy left-hand metal door of the prison. The warders went out that way. It was as easy as that. Tristram stood on the steps an instant, inhaling freedom, gazing up, astonished at the height of the sky. ‘Careful, careful, don’t give yourself away,’ he counselled his shaking heart. He walked off slowly, trying to whistle. But his mouth was still too dry for that.

Ten

S
EED-TIME
, eggs trickling in from the battery, Bessie the sow almost frisky, the twins thriving. Beatrice-Joanna and her sister sat together in the living-room, knitting a sort of wool-surrogate into warm baby-coats. In a double cradle hammered together by Shonny, Tristram and Derek Foxe slept in amity. Mavis said:

‘Far be it from me to propose that you go out jnto the night with your double bundle, but I’m only thinking of what’s best for you. Obviously, you yourself wouldn’t want to stay here for ever, apart from there not really being room. And then there’s the danger for all of us. I mean, you’ve got to make up your mind about the future, haven’t you?’

‘Oh, yes,’ agreed Beatrice-Joanna dispiritedly. ‘I see that. You’ve been very kind. I see all that.’

‘So,’ asked Mavis, ‘what have you in mind?’

‘What can I have in mind?’ said Beatrice-Joanna. ‘I’ve written three letters to Tristram, care of the Home Office, and all of them have come bouncing back. He may be dead. They may have shot him.’ She sniffed two or three times. ‘Our flat will have been pounced on by the Housing Department. I’ve nowhere to go and nobody to go to. It’s not a very pleasant situation, is it?’ She blew her nose. ‘I’ve no money. All I’ve got in the world is these twins. You can throw me out if you want to, but I’ve literally nowhere to go.’

‘Nobody’s suggesting throwing you out,’ said Mavis sharply. ‘You’re my sister, and these are my nephews, and if you have to stay here, well, I suppose that’s all there is to it.’

‘Perhaps I could get a job in Preston or somewhere,’ said Beatrice-Joanna with very small hope. ‘That would he1p a little, perhaps.’

‘There aren’t any jobs,’ said Mavis. ‘And money’s the least of anybody’s worries. It’s the danger I’m thinking about. I’m thinking about Llewelyn and Dymphna and what would happen to them if we were arrested. Because we would be, you know, if they found out, for harbouring
a what’s-its-name.’

‘A multipara is the term. I’m a multipara. You don’t see me as your sister, then. You just see me as something dangerous, a multipara.’ Mavis, her lips a line, bent to her knitting. ‘Shonny,’ said Beatrice-Joanna, ‘doesn’t think that way. It’s only you who think I’m a nuisance and a danger.’

Mavis looked up. ‘That’s a very unkind and unsisterly thing to say. That’s completely heartless and selfish. You ought to realize that the time’s come now for being sensible. We took chances before the babies were born, a lot of chances. Now you’re blaming me for putting my own children before yours. And as for Shonny – he’s too good-hearted to live. So good-hearted that he’s stupid, going on as he does about God protecting us. I get sick of hearing the name of God sometimes, if you want to know the truth. One of these days Shonny will get us all into trouble. He’ll land us all properly in the soup one of these days.’

‘Shonny’s sane enough and sensible enough.’

‘He may be sane, but sanity’s a handicap and a liability if you’re living in a mad world. He’s certainly not sensible. Put out of your head any notion that Shonny is sensible. He’s just lucky, that’s all. He talks too much and says the wrong things. One of these days, you mark my words, his luck’s going to change, and then God help the lot of us.’

‘So,’ said Beatrice-Joanna after a pause, ‘what do you want me to do?’

‘You must do whatever you think’s best for yourself. Stay here if you have to, stay as long as you think fit. But try and remember sometimes –’

‘Remember what?’

‘Well, that some people have put themselves out for you and have even run into danger. I’ll say it now and I won’t say it again. That’s an end of it. But I’d just like you to remember sometimes, that’s all.’

‘I do remember,’ said Beatrice-Joanna, her voice tightening, ‘and I’m very grateful. I’ve said that about three times a day every day since I’ve been here. Except, of course, on the day that I was actually giving birth. I would have done so then, but I had other things to think about. If you like, I’ll say it now to make up for it. I’m very grateful, I’m very grateful, I’m very grateful.’

‘Now there’s no need to be like that,’ said Mavis. ‘Let’s drop the subject, shall we?’

‘Yes,’ said Beatrice-Joanna, rising. ‘Let’s drop the subject. Remembering, of course, that it was you who raised it.’

‘There’s no call to speak in that manner,’ said Mavis.

‘Oh, to hell,’ said Beatrice-Joanna. ‘It’s time for their feed.’ She lifted the twins. There was too much of this, too much of this altogether; she would be glad when Shonny came home from his seed-drills. One woman was enough in a house, she saw that, but what could she do? ‘I think I’ll keep to my room,’ she said to her sister, ‘for the rest of the day. If you can call it a room, that is.’ Having said this, she could have bitten her tongue out. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘Do what you like,’ said Mavis acidly. ‘Go exactly where you want to go. You always have, ever since I can remember.’

‘Oh, to hell,’ said Beatrice-Joanna, and she bounced out with her pink twins.

‘Stupid,’ she thought later, lying in the outhouse. ‘No way to behave.’ She had to reconcile herself to the fact that this was the only place where she could live, the only place until she knew what precisely was going on in the world, where – if above ground, otherwise it didn’t matter – Tristram was, how to fit Derek into the scheme. The twins were awake, Derek (the one with the D sewn on his tucker) burbling with a bubble of mother’s milk on his mouth, both kicking. Bless their little cotton-substitute ocks, the darlings. She had to endure much for their sake, endurance was one of her duties. Sighing, she left the outhouse and went back to the living-room. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Mavis, wondering what precisely she was saying she was sorry for.

‘That’s all right,’ said Mavis. She had laid aside her knitting and was viciously manicuring.

‘Would you like me,’ said Beatrice-Joanna, ‘to do something about getting a meal ready?’

‘You can if you want to. I’m not particularly hungry.’

‘How about Shonny?’

‘Shonny’s taken hard-boiled eggs with him. Cook something if you want to.’

‘I’m not all that hungry myself.’

‘That’s all right then.’

Beatrice-Joanna sat down, distractedly rocking the empty cradle. Should she lift the twins from their cot, bring them in? Poor little intruders, let them stay where they were. Brightly she said to Mavis, ‘Giving your talons a bit of a sharpening?’ She could have bitten her tongue out, etc.

Mavis looked up. ‘If,’ she snapped, ‘you’ve just come back in here to be insulting –’

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I really am. Just a joke, that’s all. I just didn’t think.’

‘No, that’s one of your characteristics. You just don’t think.’

‘Oh, to hell,’ said Beatrice-Joanna. Then, ‘Sorry, sorry sorry.’

‘There’s no point at all in your keeping on saying you’re sorry if you don’t mean it.’

‘Look,’ said Beatrice-Joanna desperately, ‘what do you really want me to do?’

‘I’ve told you already. You must do exactly what you think best for yourself and your
children.’
Her enunciation of this last word made it ring with a dissonant cluster of overtones, suggesting that the only genuine children in that household were Mavis’s and that Beatrice-Joanna’s were, being illegal, spurious.

‘Oh,’ said Beatrice-Joanna, snuffing up her tears, ‘I’m so unhappy.’ She ran back to her gurgling, not at all unhappy twins. Mavis, tight-lipped, went on manicuring her talons.

Eleven

I
T
was a good deal later in the day that Captain Loosley of the Population Police arrived in his black van. ‘Here it is,’ he said to young Oxenford, the driver. ‘State Farm NW
₃₁₃
. It’s been a long journey.’

‘A disgusting journey,’ said Sergeant Image, with the strongly alveolated sibilants of his type. They had seen
things in the ploughed fields, horrible things. ‘Disgusting,’ he repeated. ‘We should have filled their buttocks with bullets.’

‘Not enough ammo on board, Sarge,’ said Oxenford, a literal young man.

‘And not our job,’ said Captain Loosley. ‘Public indecency is the concern of the regular police.’

‘Those of them that have not yet been eaten,’ said Sergeant Image. ‘Go on, Oxenford,’ he said with petulance. ‘Get out and open that gate.’

‘That’s not fair, Sarge. I’m driving.’

‘Oh, all right, then.’ And Sergeant Image extruded his long snaky body to open up. ‘Children,’ he said. ‘Children playing. Pretty children. All right,’ he said to Oxenford, ‘you drive up to the homestead. I’ll walk.’ The children ran.

In the house, breathlessly, ‘Dad,’ Llewelyn cried, ‘there are men coming in a black van. Policemen, I think.’

‘Black, you say?’ Shonny rose to peer out of the window. ‘So,’ he said. ‘We’ve been expecting them a long time, God forgive them, and they haven’t been. And now, when we’re lulled asleep, they come lolloping along in their jackboots. Where’s your sister?’ he asked Mavis sharply. ‘Is she away in the outhouse?’ Mavis nodded. ‘Tell her to lock herself in and keep quiet.’ Mavis nodded but hesitated before going. ‘Go on, then,’ urged Shonny. ‘They’ll be here in a second.’